SOPA / PIPA, and Gasoline too!

Hopefully today’s ‘Blackout‘ by some of the biggest and most popular sites on the internet has brought more attention to the proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)and it’s senate counterpart PIPA (Protect IP Act)bill, that will effectively push the internet as we know it back 20 years, or as I like to call it, Dark Ages Online*.
I’ll give you my take on SOPA, and for the longer (and professionally written) opinion, check out this article from Gizmodo.
Basically, SOPA is designed to give motion picture, television and music companies the right to have any website they find that may contain copyrighted content, shut down. This is primarily designed to stop piracy, but has the potential will really give the MPAA and RIAA free reign to do shut down legitimate websites without just cause. A good example of this would be a Youtube video of, let’s say a baby, dancing to a music video, let’s say for Beyonce, that you happen to record with your camera, then upload to Youtube. Now this video gets a lot of views, lets say 26 bazillion!, and also gets noticed by the RIAA. They would now be able to contact Youtubes hosting provider and have the site, not just the video, but the entire youtubeverse shut down. I call shenanigans!
Now take that last paragraph and multiply it by all websites that are hosted in the US, or use the most popular domain suffixes, think of .com, .edu, .net and .gov, and you will probably find that it works out to more than sixty-six percent of all the internet as we know it. These websites and domains could be shutdown.
Americans, please write to your congressional representatives and let them know that you will not stand for this. Everyone else, contact all your Amerifriends and educate them about SOPA, PIPA and internet freedom!
Btw, such a video does exist… and have like 26 bazillion views.

Oh yeah, I did mention Gasoline. My fill up wonders continue. I filled up on Tuesday, January 17th at my regular Esso in Fredericton, at my normal pump (Lucky number 7), and with a temperature hovering right around freezing… yeah, pump only stopped on me once. If you’re lost, see my previous musings about Esso pumps hating me and the further woes of filling up.

*Dark Ages Online – I should make a game about having dial up internet 20 years ago… maybe an MMO! Patent Pending!